Throngs of mourners headed to California yesterday to pay their final respects to former US president Ronald Reagan in the first of several public events planned this week to honor the 40th president's last wish that ordinary Americans be given a chance to say goodbye.
After a private ceremony for family and close friends at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, where the former president will lie in state, there will be a public viewing until this evening, when his body will be flown to Washington.
There, a horse-drawn wagon, accompanied by a single drummer, will carry Reagan's body to the Rotunda of the US Capitol, where his remains will again lie in state from tomorrow evening through Friday morning.
A funeral service will be held at the National Cathedral in Washington on Friday with US President George W. Bush and other world leaders in attendance.
The body will be flown back to California on Friday, where a private sunset burial will be held on a hillside overlooking the ocean at the Reagan Library.
Reagan died at his Los Angeles home on Saturday at the age of 93 after a 10-year battle with Alzheimer's disease.
"President Reagan was a man of the people, and it was real important for him that people be given the opportunity to pay their respects if they wanted," said Joanne Drake, his chief of staff.
Friday will be also designated as a national day of mourning for the popular ex-president, celebrated for hastening the end of the Cold War and reviving US spirits as he reshaped the Republican Party into a conservative political force. Bush declared Friday a government holiday.
Drake declined to give details of Reagan's last days but said his wife of 52 years, Nancy, and their two children, Patti Davis and Ronald Prescott Reagan, were at his bedside when he died.
Reagan's son, Michael, adopted during his first marriage to actress Jane Wyman, arrived moments after the president died.
"While this is an extremely sad time for Mrs. Reagan, there is definitely a sense of relief that he is no longer suffering and has gone to a better place," Drake said.
"It has been a really hard 10 years for her and she really appreciates the love, prayers and support that have been extended to her."
Reagan's will be first presidential funeral in Washington since former US president Lyndon Johnson's in 1973.
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